Kandy attractions

The golden-roofed Temple of the Sacred Tooth houses Sri Lanka’s most important Buddhist relic – a tooth of the Buddha. During puja (offerings or prayers), the heavily guarded room housing the tooth is open to devote…

Dominating the town is Kandy Lake. A leisurely stroll around it, with a few stops on the lakeside seats, is a pleasant way to spend a few hours, although diesel-spurting buses careening around the southern edge of t…

Hidden away in Kandy's leafy outskirts is the little-visited, but fascinating, Degal Doruwa Raja Maha Vihara cave temple, constructed (with the help of some obliging boulders) in the 18th century. The interior of th…

This museum occupies the upper two floors of the Alut Maligawa building and contains a stunning array of gifts donated by several presidents and Buddhist leaders from across the world to the Temple of the Tooth. Let…

This well-maintained cemetery contains 163 graves from colonial times. Perhaps the most striking aspect of a visit here is learning just how young most people were when they died – if you made it to 40 you were of a…

This museum occupies the 1925-vintage Hantane Tea Factory, 4km south of Kandy on the Hantane road. Abandoned for more than a decade, it was recently refurbished and has good exhibits on tea pioneers James Taylor and…

Housed inside the former High Court buildings, the World Buddhism Museum contains lots of photographs, models and displays illustrating Buddhism around the world. Note that a large number of the statues and other ex…

This museum once housed Kandyan royal concubines and now features royal regalia and reminders of pre-European Sinhalese life. One of the most impressive exhibits is Rajasinha II's golden crown, but for visitors the …

The three-storey Alut Maligawa is a large shrine hall displaying dozens of sitting Buddhas donated by devotees from Thailand. Its design resembles a Thai Buddhist temple, reflecting the fact that Thai monks reestabl…

To the north of the Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic, but still within the compound, is the 19th-century Audience Hall, an open-air pavilion with stone columns carved to look like wooden pillars. Adjacent in the Raj…

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